MEASURING ANTI-POLISH BIASES AMONG HOLOCAUST TEACHERS

A questionnaire was sent to members of Jewish and Polish fraternal organizations; members of National Polish American Jewish American Council and one other Polish-Jewish dialogue group; and individuals who research or teach college Holocaust-related courses. The material presented here includes analyses of those survey questions that asked respondents to assess the actions and motivation of the Home Army, Catholic Church leaders, and ordinary Christian Poles. All 18 survey questions presented here were measured on a 6-item scale, from 'strongly disagree' to 'strongly agree'. Results were tabulated for 310 U.S. respondents: 110 Polish-Americans, 167 Jewish-Americans, and 33 non-Jewish, non-Polish academicians. As expected, the differences were greatest between Jewish and Polish members of fraternal organizations and smallest between dialogue group members. Somewhat surprising the differences between Jewish and Polish academicians and researchers were almost as large as the difference between non-academic members of fraternal organizations. Non-Polish, non-Jewish Holocaust teachers had views that were much more similar to those of Jewish than Polish academicians. Jewish academicians had much more negative views of the Catholic Church and the Polish people than Jewish members of dialogue groups. When subdividing academicians, Jewish non-historians who teach Holocaust-related courses had substantial stronger anti-Polish and anti-Catholic views than Jewish teachers who were historians. The views of researchers at U.S. Holocaust museums and Yad Vashem verify these differences between U.S. Jewish historians and non-historians. These findings strongly suggest that much of the anti-Polish and anti-Catholic content of Holocaust courses reflects the ignorance of Polish history of many Jewish faculty who teach these courses.